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Las Cruces family searches for answers 11 years after father's disappearance

By Diana Washington Valdez/El Paso Times

Posted:
01/20/2013 03:57:36 PM MST

Cold Case Unit Investigator Lee Medina, of the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Department, shows a photo of Darryll La Plante, who has been missing more than 10 years. La Plante's case is one of about 17 cold cases, which date back to the 1800s, that investigators are still attempting to solve.
(Shari V. Hill/Sun-News)

Darryll La Plante, who lived north of Las Cruces in Doña Ana County, has been missing from his home since 2002.

"No one knows how he left or where he went to," said Lee Medina, a detective with the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office. "He did not take his vehicle, and left his wallet and personal things behind."

La Plante is one of the thousands of men, women and children who go missing each year and are not seen or heard from again.

"Nationwide, there are as many as 100,000 active missing persons at a given time," said J. Todd Matthews, spokesman for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS). "Some have described missing persons as the nation's 'silent mass disaster.'"

NamUs operates the first national clearinghouse for missing persons that is accessible to the public and law enforcement. Created in 2009, NamUs, which is helping to solve missing person's cases, also provides top forensics experts and other resources to help investigators.

It is housed at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, and is funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Medina, a veteran investigator, said the La Plante has become a cold case. La Plante was 70 years old when he vanished, and would be 80 by now if he is still alive.

The detective said La Plante was in good physical and mental health had worked at White Sands Missile Range and taught part time at New Mexico State University.

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"His wife went to a quilting seminar out of town, and when she returned, he was gone. She found a note he allegedly wrote that said he had gone to "remotesville," Medina said.

"His wife hired a private investigator to find him before she reported him missing to police. We did not find any activity on his Social Security number, and neither his wife nor any of his five children ever heard from him again."

"He was highly intelligent and could be living under an assumed name in another country, but no one really knows," Medina said.

La Plante is 5-feet, 9-inches tall, weighs about 130 pounds, and would be 80 years old. He has blue eyes and white hair.

Medina encourages anyone who has information about the missing man to contact the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office, 575-202-6593.

The unidentified

According to NamUs and the New Mexico Department of Public Safety, which also maintains a database of missing persons, at least 85 people are missing in New Mexico under unexplained or suspicious circumstances.

The lists are not exhaustive because participation in NamUs and other clearinghouses is voluntary. All the missing persons cases that could be in NamUs are not there yet, Matthews said.

In Southern New Mexico, two of the missing persons of special interest to law enforcement are in Doña Ana County, four are in Las Cruces, two in Silver City, two in Deming and one is in Alamogordo.

Investigators said the missing come from all walks of life and backgrounds. Some may be victims of foul play, others likely were abducted by relatives, and still others simply could have walked away from their lives voluntarily. Some likely are dead and their bodies are in a morgue
somewhere waiting to be identified or claimed.

Matthews said that nationwide there may also be up to 40,000 human remains that are unidentified. "And, nationwide," he said, "another 4,400 unidentified remain are found every year and over 1,000 of these remain unidentified after one year."

NamUs, in addition to information about missing persons, contains information on the unidentified remains of people held in morgues, as well as the remains of people who have not been claimed by next of kin.

As of Friday, New Mexico had 100 such cases pending. That's after 21 cases had been solved since NamUs began in 2009.

In Southern New Mexico, the number of unidentified persons in NamUs includes eight in Doña Ana County, two in Otero County, one in Sierra County, and 18 in Luna County, including eight women who were found between 2001 and 2007.

Solving cases

Historically, missing person's cases, especially old ones, had been difficult to solve, and that's why NamUs was created, Matthews said.

However, a new concerted emphasis on coordination and collaboration led to the resolution of 4,309 cases nationally, including 70 in New Mexico.

Matthews, who also works with the Doe Network, an international clearing house for missing persons, said the need for a U.S. central clearinghouse for missing persons became evident over the years.

Detectives in Southern New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, said they are familiar with NamUs, and are using its resources.

"Although NCIC (the National Crime Information Center) was helpful, we did not have one institution or center that was dedicated specifically to missing person's cases," Matthews said. "We had a situation that required thinking outside of our counties and state borders. Data was not being shared effectively."

According to NamUs, finding missing adults is difficult, in part because few states have laws that actually require law enforcement to prepare missing person reports of adults.

Geography and different jurisdictions present different challenges. For example, the body of a missing person who died could be in a morgue of another county or state, but without the ability to cross-check across jurisdictions, an investigator might never make the connection.

NamUs also allows the public, including relatives of the missing and advocates, to submit information about missing people. After these submissions are checked out with law enforcement, the information is uploaded on the NamUs website, along with any available photos or sketches of the missing person.

Relatives, as well as law enforcement, can arrange to provide DNA samples free of charge that authorities can use to match to missing persons.

El Paso County Sherriff's Detective Irene Anchondo said this aspect of NamUs helps to give relatives of missing persons some control in their search for missing loved ones.

In cooperation with Mexican consular officials, Matthews said NamUs resources also are being used to identify migrants from Mexico who died at the border in states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

"The deaths of migrants along the border are a big problem," Matthews said.

According to the Arizona Human Remains Recovery Project, an advocacy organization, the remains of 2,446 men, women and children were found at the Arizona-Sonora border between fiscal years 2001 and 2012.

Mexico does not have a national database similar to NamUs to match missing persons with recovered remains. Plus, some of the human remains found along the border could also be of people from Central and South American countries.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), probably the best known program focused on missing children, has partnered with NamUs.

NCMEC, a private, nonprofit organization created in 1984, maintains a database of missing children and serves as a national resource on missing and sexually exploited children. Several missing persons cases of youths from El Paso and Southern New Mexico, some dating to 1987, are in its database.

Advocates say that over the years, new laws had to be passed to bring about the kind of changes that are leading to rescues and resolutions.

"In 1984, police could enter information about stolen cars, stolen guns, and even stolen horses into the FBI's national crime computer - but not stolen children. That is no longer the case," according to NCMEC's website.

Bob Lowery, NCMEC's executive director for the missing children division in Washington, D.C., said new tools are helping to locate more missing children than before.

"When we started out in 1984, we had a success rate for finding children of 62 percent. Today, it's 98 percent," Lowery said. "We are finding more children today than ever in the history of the United States.

"Public awareness is greater, we have cell phones, we can communicate with the public in real time, and we have the Internet, better DNA technology and the Amber Alert system. As we develop social media tools, we will be able to reach masses of people that we couldn't
before."

Lowery said NamUs has not reached its full potential, but when it does it will offer a formidable tool for locating people of all ages who are missing, especially the older cases.

"For example, we had a case that was more than 20 years old, and it turned out the victim was (found) dead but in another place other than where the person was reporting missing," Lowery said. "It was not until a connection was made using DNA and biometrics that the family
was able to get answers. We don't say that families find closure. What we try to give them are answers."

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 915-546-6130.

Missing persons

Source: NamUs

Nation

Total cases: 12,686

Open cases: 8,377 (66 %)

Closed cases: 4,309 (33.96%)

NamUs aided: 380 (8.81%)

New Mexico

Total cases: 153

Open cases: 84 (54.9%)

Closed cases: 69 (45.09%)

Missing males: 74 (48.36%)

Missing females: 79 (51.63%)

Average age: 29 years

Searchable databases of missing persons

National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems: www.namus.gov

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: www.ncmec.org

Texas Department of Public Service: http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/mpch/mpch.htm

New Mexico Department of Public Service: http://missingpersons.dps.state.nm.us/